Mr. Hoekstra said the NSA needs to determine how Mr. Snowden, a contractor employed by Booz Allen Hamilton and stationed by the NSA in Hawaii to maintain computer architecture, was able to gain access to documents unrelated to his job — top-secret court orders and the Prism PowerPoint.

“This has been decided by the executive branch and by Congress that this needs to happen,” Mr. Hoekstra said. “You can’t have one person go out and say, ‘The executive branch, the legislative branch and the courts — they’re all wrong and I’m right and I’m going to go tell the press and tell the world about this.’”